Articles & Resources
News Articles
Division of Highway Traffic Safety Child Passenger Safety
Please reference this website for information on Child Seat Recall Lists, Car Seat Safety Inspections, and other Child Passenger Safety tips. READ MORE
How to Teach Children About Healthy Eating, Without Food Shaming- The New York Times
Caitlyn Hitt grew up in a household with “food issues,” where her family frequently talked about weight and dieting. She was urged not to eat certain foods because of how they might impact her appearance, she said, and had diets pushed on her at a young age. Hitt said that the experience gave her a complex about her weight and made her see certain foods as bad. READ MORE
Teach Your Kids to Fail - Let Kids Play - The New York Times
I want to tell my children that they are smart all the time. Especially in the first few years of a child’s life, her rapid acquisition of skills and language feels nothing short of miraculous, even though it could not be more mundane. One day, she’s a sentient adorable lump, and an eyeblink later she’s speaking in full sentences. I have a particularly clear memory of watching one of my daughters figure out how to make a Magna-Tile house that would stand up on its own, and thinking: Look at this tiny architectural genius. READ MORE
Let Kids Play - The New York Times
The most famous painting of children at play is “Children’s Games,” the 1560 work by Pieter Bruegel the Elder of a town square in which children from toddlers to adolescents (scholars have counted 246) are playing a range of timeless games. There are dolls and marbles and tiddlywinks, ball games and climbing games and riding games (scholars have counted 90 or so). The children are the only ones in town, and their activities offer a kind of taxonomy of play. READ MORE
How to Play Our Way to a Better Democracy - The New York Times
Before he died, Senator John McCain wrote a loving farewell statement to his fellow citizens of “the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil.” Senator McCain also described our democracy as “325 million opinionated, vociferous individuals.” How can that many individuals bind themselves together to create a great nation? What special skills do we need to develop to compensate for our lack of shared ancestry? READ MORE
7 Skills Preschoolers Develop While They Play, Because There's More To Fun & Games Than You Thought - Romper
Look into my preschool classroom, and you'll see a colorful space where a group of 4-year-olds are happily playing. Some are making towers out of wooden and foam blocks. A few are "cooking" dinner in the play kitchen. Students are painting with watercolors and gluing yarn onto empty tissue boxes. Two more are pouring water in and out of cups and funnels in a large table. It looks like so much fun, you might wonder: What does this play have to do with learning? READ MORE
The Case for Creative Play in a Digital Age
A new statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics advises parents of young children to go for high-quality traditional toys rather than elaborate digital ones. READ MORE
Parent Resources
Read Aloud with Children of All Ages
“THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT ACTIVITY for building knowledge for their eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children,” stressed Becoming a Nation of Readers, a 1985 report by the Commission on Reading. Learning to Read and Write: Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Young Children (1998), a joint position statement of the International Reading Association (IRA) and NAEYC, echoes Wells (1985) and Bus, van IJzendoorn, and Pellegrini (1995): “The single most important activity for building these understandings and skills essential for reading success appears to be reading aloud to children.” READ MORE
NJ Department of Health Vaccine Preventable Disease Program
Listed in the chart below are the minimum required number of doses your child must have in order to enroll/attend a child care/preschool facility in NJ. Additional vaccines are recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), but only the following are required for child care/preschool attendance in NJ. CLICK HERE FOR CHART
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University
The Center on the Developing Child’s diverse activities align around building an R&D (research and development) platform for science-based innovation, and transforming the policy and practice landscape that supports and even demands change. We do this because society pays a huge price when children do not reach their potential, because half a century of policies and programs have not produced breakthrough outcomes, and because dramatic advances in science are ready to be used to achieve a promising future for every child. CLICK HERE TO ACCESS WEBSITE